In his latest Power On Newsletter, Bloomburg’s Mark Gurman says that the AI feature in Apple’s iOS 18 will be ‘entirely on-device.’ Apple will tout this as giving users more privacy and speed than with AI running from powerful server farms…although the AI Model..code named Ajax…won’t really be as powerful as the ones backed by monster servers. Apple feels that with their tight software and hardware integration that this is the best way for their users…at least for now. Cupertino is doing what all the other big tech firms are…dumping billions into AI, so we may see them open up more to server based large language models before long. We’ll know more after WWDC, which starts June 10th. 

With the passage over the weekend of a bill over the weekend in the House of Representatives that…in addition to foreign aid, demanded that TikTok must be sold to owners not affiliated with the Chinese government or army, a TikTok spokesman has said  the move “would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate seven million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the US economy annually”. BBC.com reports that the company went on to say that its owner ByteDance “is not an agent of China or any other country”. ByteDance points to the many global investment firms that own 60% of it. If signed into law, the bill would give ByteDance a year to sell TikTok to non-Chines owners…or else be blocked in the US. 

As business has slowed, in part due to prospective customers tiring of Elon Musk’s antics, as well as the tepid reception then recall of Cybertrucks…Tesla has chopped two grand off the base prices of their Models S, X, and Y. Engadget.com says the price reductions were posted on X Friday night. Tesla is also cutting its referral program in all markets as of April 30th. This all follows on the heels of the company laying off over 10% of employees worldwide. It should be noted that Tesla had just grown their workforce by 10% over the last couple of years. 

It’s kind of sad to report that Post.News is calling it quits. The Twitter wannabe site was started by the former CEO of Waze, and theverge.com notes that it just never got enough traction to be viable. I was on Post from the start, and it was a real seat of the pants operation…very little staff, and really only had about a half million users….compared to the over 100 million that Meta’s Threads got right away. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.